


It All Has to Burn, and It's Going to Blaze

by woodironbone



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Characters, Asexual Relationship, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Daisy Lives, Elizabeth Gets Woke, F/F, Female Friendship, Female-Centric, Fix-It, Gen, POV Multiple, Present Tense, both tags are technically accurate, just doin their Lutece thing, the Luteces are here as well
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2018-09-16 21:13:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9289808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodironbone/pseuds/woodironbone
Summary: Badass women and unapologetic rage. Revolution, great escapes, and quantum mechanics - false equivalencies unraveled, retcons undone. In the game of multitudes, nothing is absolute.Daisy Fitzroy is alive and she has work to do.





	1. Variance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [100indecisions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/100indecisions/gifts).



> I stumbled across your Yuletide request too late to do a treat fill, but I decided to do it anyway, because the prompt was everything I have ever wanted. Just finished a big full-series replay, and all the feelings (and frustration) are present and acute, so the time was right.
> 
> The time is right in more ways than one. I dunno about anyone else but this is gonna be my coping mechanism for the coming weeks. I hope you enjoy, along with anyone else who wants to see Daisy rise up and kick some righteous ass.
> 
> Title is from [Jenny Holzer's Inflammatory Essays](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/151336?search_no=1&index=51). Also, if anyone's interested, I made a playlist to accompany this fic. [Listen along here](http://8tracks.com/woodironbone/so-enough-about-the-backfires-this-time-we-fire-back).
> 
> ****See Endnotes for chapter-specific content/trigger warnings.****

Rosalind Lutece is not often wrong. When she is, it's generally reserved for the little sing-song games of perspective she plays with her so-called brother. Wrongness on any greater scale, an empirical scale, is decidedly unusual. This comes with the territory of having all the facts (and most of the variables) at one's fingertips. Complacency is the enemy of any good scientist, however, and vigilance is key. One must maintain the awareness, and trust in the awareness, that in the game of multitudes, nothing is absolute; that on a long enough timeline, anything has the capacity to change, for reasons indiscernible. Well, indiscernible at first.

Of course, on that same long-enough timeline, it is true that everyone's survival rate will eventually drop to zero, a fact she's circumvented well enough. It would be easy, if foolish, to assume that she is, in some way, a special case. After all, the cruciality of her survival is clear; none of this would have been possible if she and her brother were not, to use a fantastical if not altogether ill-fitting term, 'un-dead'. And now, across time and space and time again, flickering nimbly across dimensions seemingly at will, survival is second nature. Yes, she _died, dies, will die_ ; but that death was/is/will be little more than the birth of a thousand new branches, through which she will-have-had-been navigating with expert grace. Having long ago slipped the bonds of two-dimensional systems of measurement—time vs. probability—having increased exponentially the difficulty with which she can be found... Well, suffice to say Rosalind Lutece has become very, very hard to kill.

It would be foolish to assume anything, and yet. Having all those facts and variables can lead one down such paths. After all, there have been certainties, seeming absolutes. Constants. Just as she and her brother operate above the long-enough timeline, others have always seemed to hold beneath. Sometimes one's survival rate _starts_ at zero; sometimes there is no mystery at all in the who's-who of infinitely probable death. Once a no-probability survival rate has been many-times established, well, can Rosalind truly be blamed for expecting it to _stay_ that way?

And if something once fixed can become so trippingly _un_ -fixed, after all this time (and all these iterations), then what can be said about her own fairly steadfast talent for lingering on?

It turns out quantum immortality is a tricky beast.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

What it comes down to is this: that among the constants upon which Rosalind has clumsily come to rely—the outcome of a coin toss; the curiously persistent formula of lighthouse, city, and man; the understanding that the entanglement of Comstock and DeWitt starts in a river and can only ever end in that same river—there is one she fails to account for again and again. The mistake. Not the only mistake, but distinct for being the result of her own short-sightedness. A constant—a _woman_ , who falls simply, firmly, unjustly into Rosalind's own blind spot.

Daisy Fitzroy, an ignorable figure in the proceedings: shit-stirrer, firestarter, violent successor, and the necessary ignition point of Elizabeth's character growth. Every branch ending in a sure death, to the surprise of no one. And then something changes. Not all at once, never all at once. Over some borderless period of time, under the gathering observation of Rosalind and her brother-self, without any discernible catalyst, Daisy Fitzroy shifts from constant to variable.

· · ·

"She's not _doing_ it," Robert insists, whines, really. Rosalind has broken many presumed laws—physical, temporal, natural—to be with her brother, and she would sooner break the universe in half than give him up, but he _is_ so very petulant at times.

"She _will_ ," says Rosalind.

"How do you know?"

"Because she always has and always does." Rosalind presses her lips tightly together. They are flitting, hovering like hummingbirds, observing the passage of events from a safe and hidden vantage. Booker DeWitt has not died—so far—and the girl has opened the tears required. Things seem to be moving along well enough. What the operation now hinges on is the death of Fink (done) and the threat of violence upon his son. This is the crucial moment that will allow the girl to depart the trappings of her young self and step into the role she _must_ undertake. The willingness to kill, to set a course of her own making. Fitzroy has the boy inside the tower but she does not _act_ ; she sits, stares through the father's blood streaked across her face, at the boy weeping in the corner. Gun on the floor beside her.

It is concerning.

"I'm not so sure that's enough," says Robert.

"There have always been variations—"

" _Minor_ variations—"

"And the confrontation has always ended with this!" Rosalind glances—steps to another vantage, then glances, then steps back—at the others. DeWitt and the girl are making progress through the Vox horde. They will return to Fitzroy soon.

"Last time she hesitated," Robert points out.

"But she did it."

"And the time before that."

"But she _did it_."

"She's been hesitating longer and longer each time."

"Would you like me to lodge a formal complaint?"

"I'd like you to consider the possibility that—"

"—the possibility that something is wrong." Rosalind doesn't like to admit it, but she likes less having her sentence finished without her.

"I think she's listing," Robert says after a sullen pause.

"Like a ship at sea."

"Do you suppose she remembers?"

"Remembers dying?" Rosalind wrinkles her nose. "She never has before."

"She never used to hesitate."

"All right!" Rosalind draws herself up with a haughty sigh. Enough of this patter. DeWitt and the girl will be here very soon, and they both know it. "What would you have me do?"

Robert considers it, and before he answers she knows what he's going to say. Their conclusions, their word choice, their mutual understanding, it all falls and always falls within a certain range of similitude. Conclusions drawn, choices made, understanding arrived at with simultaneity, within only a small margin of variance. It is because they are essentially the same person; one a bit more petulant, trusting a bit more to his bloody conscience, than the other.

Still, she lets him say it.

"Perhaps we should talk to her," he says.

"Perhaps we should," sighs Rosalind.

Interference is a bother, and the consequences could always be dire. Stepping into a moment will alter it, and it is only time that will tell how. Fitzroy is not like DeWitt, whose nature demands their constant attention, a key player who has long made home and bed out of ignorance, skepticism, and uneasy complacency. Fitzroy, well. They've nudged her before, but it's always been a gently guiding hand. She was an ally who suffered at the hand of their betrayer, then a useful cog in the machine. The marvelous thing about Fitzroy has always been that she knows exactly what she wants to accomplish. She is direct. She motivates herself. And she fails. Every time, she fails. That has been critical.

She started to hesitate, which was acceptable. Even constants operate within a certain margin of error.

Every other time she has overcome her own hesitation.

This time, when DeWitt and Elizabeth reach her, they find her setting the Fink boy free. She turns to them, exchanges a few curt words with the Booker who is not her Booker, and finally relents and lets them have their airship.

The wheel turns, but Elizabeth is unprepared for what lies ahead, and the Vox do not force the issue, and while Booker lies dead outside Comstock House, Elizabeth breaks under torture, and the mountains of man are drowned in flame.

The cycle continues.

Rosalind sighs again, and looks at her brother. "Fine," she says.

"I never expected her to surprise us," he remarks as they step back a few moments.

"That _is_ the nature of surprise," she reminds him.

 

It is an agreed-upon risk to step in so close to the matter at hand. The difference between setting gears in motion, or jamming a wrench into the works. Whether she knows it or not, this iteration of Fitzroy is already set upon the path of inaction, a path that ends in the wrong sorts of fire; they could be dirtying the waters further if this doesn't take.

But everyone has to start somewhere, even if they are moving backwards.

"Keep _quiet_ ," Daisy barks, her voice low and hoarse with the wear of days of shouting. She isn't aware they've arrived yet. She's adjusting Fink's blindfold and gag, muffling whimpers as though it'll matter in a moment. They stand together in a cramped, low-lit space inside the factory tower, Fink and his boy trussed up on a crate, Fitzroy fussing over them with sweating palms.

The lantern flickers, a frenetic play of shadows heralding their arrival in a place they should not be. These little oddities follow them everywhere, signposts of their intrusion upon the natural order. Lights guttering, ripples in the air. They've more important things to investigate than these little quirks. Daisy, it seems, has come to recognize them as calling cards. She turns slowly and without alarm. She seems unable to decide how to react beyond a steady, heavy-lidded gaze.

"Lutece," she says. She is an efficient woman of economical words, gifted with a rather surprising clarity of thought. She seemed to understand immediately, intrinsically, that when addressing them, the singular will always suffice.

Fink twitches at the name, and is ignored by all.

"We do apologize for dropping in like this," says Rosalind blithely.

"It was something of an urgent matter," adds Robert.

"Uh-huh." Daisy shuffles back and sits down on the crate behind her, hunching over low, weighed down by the world. "What's happened?"

"Ah, you see, that's precisely it," says Rosalind.

"Not precisely," says Robert.

"Precisely not it," she amends.

"It's what _hasn't_ happened—"

"—hasn't happened _yet_ —"

"—that's the trouble."

"Something go wrong?" Daisy always takes them at face value, which is something of a boon. None of the gibbering standoffishness they get from DeWitt. Standoffishness, yes, but without time-wasting questions like _what are you talking about_ or _can't you people just make sense?_ Rosalind suspects, and suspects again that she is not wrong in suspecting, that this is an attitude learned during enslavement. One can only gawp at so many eccentric white people, after all.

"Something will go wrong," says Robert.

"Someting _has_ gone wrong," Rosalind corrects.

"Something will have gone wrong."

"There is one final step we need you to take." Rosalind breaks the pattern neatly because they are quite pressed for time, or rather, Daisy is.

"You're going to kill him," says Robert. "Jeremiah Fink."

"Yeah," says Daisy with an impatient edge. Even she has her limits. "I know."

"But _after_ you kill him," Rosalind persists, "what of the boy?"

"The _boy_?" Daisy sits up a little straighter, attention caught.

"The boy." Robert tilts his head very slightly to light his glance on the child, who is crying softly. Robert is stiff-backed and rarely moves compared to Rosalind; she is more of a bird, gesturing sharply, turning her head this way and that. Odd, those little, insignificant details.

"Something must be done about him," says Rosalind.

"Something _will_ have been done," says Robert.

"Now wait a minute." Daisy gets back to her feet and takes a few steps toward them.

"We don't have a minute," Robert says with an audible frown.

" _You_ don't," Rosalind corrects.

"What _about_ the boy?"

Robert and Rosalind allow themselves a breath, just a brief, soft moment, an exchange of glances.

"Wasn't it _you_ who said they must be pulled up at the root?" Rosalind murmurs, their eyes shifting back to Daisy's.

"He must be made to fear," says Robert.

"You must be _seen_ making him fear," says Rosalind.

"This is a necessary step toward the goal you have set."

"A critical rung on the ladder to Comstock's undoing."

"You have done it before," says Robert, softer, gentler, and Rosalind represses a click of the tongue. She'd been tempted to share this, but she doubts she would have if she'd been acting alone. Still, his over-eagerness is preferable to her previous isolation.

"Why did I do it before?" Daisy says obstinately. "Why not now?"

"We haven't the faintest," says Rosalind.

"We're only observers," says Robert.

"No. _No_." Daisy turns away, pacing across the room, lantern light spilling amber around her small, wiry silhouette. She presses a calloused, rust-stained hand to her brow, easing stress from her temples. "Look. Don't think I'm not grateful for all you've done. But whatever I was thinking before? I'm not thinkin' it now."

Which is true, and troubling. Right under their noses, Daisy Fitzroy has completely shifted from one mode of thought, one with a firm foundation and a fiery heart, to another. How could they have missed it?

" _Now_ is such a fleeting concept," Robert remarks.

"Now, then, shortly," sighs Rosalind. "In a matter of moments, the world can be a very different place."

" _If_ you follow the steps," says Robert.

"That would be ideal."

" _No_." There's that word again. Daisy drops her hand and faces them once again. Calm and hard. More than meets the eye, to be certain. "I'm telling you no." She draws a breath, takes a moment to steady herself, and they do not interrupt. "I've taken your counsel, and you done me good service, but... I will not hurt the boy. I will see Fink and Comstock burn, but I will not hold the son to account for the deeds of his father."

"You've misunderstood us," says Rosalind.

"We neither asked you to _harm_ the child—"

"—nor did we promise that _yours_ would be the hand that would set Comstock's world afire."

There was never much hope that they could run rings around her on this one. Were she dead-set, pun most certainly unintended, upon sparing the child, she would not very well alter that course without a very good reason. There is no turning back now; now they've brought her in on the secret, they've given her the key to the code. Now she has a choice.

"A famous man once said—" Robert muses.

"—and a famous man _shall_ say—" Rosalind notes.

"I may reach the mountaintop—"

"—but I fear I shall never visit the valley below."

"But..." Daisy falters, finding an uncharacteristic difficulty in choosing her words. "You mean I won't _live_ to see the...?" Her voice shudders. She turns away. "No," she whispers.

"It's up to you what matters more," says Rosalind.

"Your part in the play—"

"—or the play itself."

Time is very short now, and Robert knows it when he initiates their final foray into the divulging of information: "Someone is coming."

Rosalind will not be left behind. "She'll arrive a girl."

"She _must leave_ a woman."

"And what makes the difference between a girl and a woman?" Rosalind catches Daisy's eye, meets it, unblinking.

Daisy knows the answer, and she gives it in a soft growl: "Blood."

"Your part in the play—" Robert reiterates.

"—or the play _itself_." Rosalind smiles, because she already knows they've got it.

"Turn her into a killer?" Daisy's eyes flick between them, thinking, always thinking. "How?"

Robert meets her gaze dead-on (pun somewhat intended) when he says, "Give the girl _no choice_ —"

"—and she will be forced to _make one_ ," finishes Rosalind.

The lantern flickers, the room darkens. When it flares up again, the Luteces are gone.

 

The wheel turns.

The pattern repeats once for every failure, every missed attempt. Each time they follow their script, and each time Fitzroy plays her part, and each time Elizabeth dispatches her along with her own innocence, as scheduled. The need to interfere had been a small hiccup in the proceedings, but Rosalind would be content to look past it.

She knows they've finally succeeded when, during another run of the conversation, she catches a peripheral glimpse of someone lurking in the ventilation shaft, peering at them from the dark—a sure sign that there is a _future_ here, that all conditions are satisfied. Sure enough, the cycle completes itself: Elizabeth opens every door and drowns DeWitt in the river. It's done.

· · ·

It's not done.

"Lutece," barks Fitzroy.

Rosalind is not often, or easily, startled. She cannot remember the last time she was properly startled.

There is Daisy Fitzroy, blood on her face, shotgun in her hand, mud tracked on the carpet, standing in Rosalind's living room, standing beside the Contraption. Rosalind is seated at her desk, hands and attention disrupted from a cup of tea and a scrawl of equations. This is not where she is meant to be. Or rather, she has never _meant_ to be here before.

Rosalind does not have what one might call _down-time—_ she and her brother are where they're needed, and needed where they are, after all. But in countless iterations across time and space and time again, they've never been needed here, like this, at this exact moment. With Fitzroy in the room.

The shotgun in Fitzroy's hand—it's raised, in fact, aimed at Rosalind's face.

"I think you'll find that an ineffectual means of communication," Rosalind says after a moment. There's an empty gap in the conversation, in the air beside her, and she belatedly realizes: _where is Robert?_

"I think I'll keep it here just the same," says Daisy, and lifts her chin. "I been looking for you."

"Yes," says Rosalind. "You're meant to be dead."

"Nah." Daisy smiles faintly. "See, that's what I mean to talk to you about."

"Oh?" Rosalind smiles back, a little veil against the internal calculus currently rattling her cage. _Why is she here, how did she miss this, how could she have missed this, where is Robert?_ "I see. You're from an alternative outcome."

"Girl, I _am_ the alternative outcome," says Daisy. "Listen up. I ain't doin' it no more."

"I don't think you understand," says Rosalind, keenly aware that at present, _she_ does not understand either, and this is a terribly discomfiting state to be in. "The cycle is complete. Comstock is dead. Better yet: the _possibility_ of Comstock is dead. What's done is done, and all went according to plan."

"Your plan, maybe," says Daisy. "Not mine." She takes five slow steps forward, crossing the room until the barrel of the gun is uncomfortably close, difficult even for a relative immortal to bear. "See, I been lookin' for a long while, and I had a lotta time to think about what you and your brother said—my part in the play, or the play itself. Nice words. Did the trick, didn't they? Even had me fooled. Well. Some of me."

From that phrasing, it would be fair to hypothesize that Fitzroy is experiencing a fragmentation of the self. Not an uncommon outcome for the prisoner of layering multitudes; but what _is_ uncommon is her awareness of the situation, her ability to provoke this encounter. Certainly she did not create a tear. How, then—?

 _Where_ is Robert?

"Here's the thing," says Daisy. "All that time to mull over what the movement meant to me—what my life added up to in the end—I got to thinkin', I don't know if I need anymore whitefolks tellin' me what my part is. How _useful_ I can be. If I'm a martyr, or a catalyst."

"You were both," Rosalind points out. ( _Are_ both, but she can't indulge in grammatical exercises by herself.)

"I ain't _askin'_ your opinion," Daisy snaps. "Get this straight. I am done dyin'. Daisy Fitzroy is not your plaything and she ain't gonna die for you _no more_."

"You were never dying for _me_ ," says Rosalind rather sharply. She can feel herself coming undone, her usual hold on absolute equilibrium slipping. "You died for your _movement_. That is the essence of a martyr."

"You wanna be real careful _explainin'_ things to me," Daisy says in a cold hiss. "Things I _lived_." Disarmingly, she smiles again, and shrugs with one shoulder. "Or things I didn't, I s'pose."

Rosalind purses her lips in deep dissatisfaction. "It was the only way."

"I know you think that," says Daisy, and finally lowers her gun, standing small even at her most straight-backed. "But that's assuming there's only one outcome. And there's _not_ , Lutece. There's that—" she gestures with the gun toward the shivering gap in the air, the tear Rosalind somehow failed to notice, from which Daisy must have emerged, "—and then there's _me_."

· · ·

A noted Argentine once wrote—and a noted Argentine _shall_ write—" _La exacta geografía de los hechos que voy a referir importa muy poco_." Or, to give an official translation, " _the precise geography of the facts I am going to relate hardly matters,_ " a phrase Rosalind has come to consider of great relevance to her own way of life-after-life. Her geography is time, which no longer holds to any of the usual strictures. She is neither bound by it, nor it by her. Her passage through it is not in any sense linear; her participation in and awareness of events neither guaranteed nor required. Which is to say, the wheel turns without her, with no regard to the integrity of her involvement.

It is no small accident that Robert is absent when Fitzroy catches up with her; and it is not unconnected that it took her so long to note the tear in her own living room. Once the mind has become accustomed to being in constant contact with its entangled pair, separation cannot help but muddy the waters.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves, again. Some of this will take time to explain.

It would be best to trace back to the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content Warnings in This Chapter:**  
>  -Mild threat of gun violence (not followed through). I should take this opportunity to say that gun violence, both threatened and carried out, is going to be the norm for this fic, so I'm not going to note it every time, I suppose unless circumstances are extraordinary.
> 
>  **Miscellany:**  
>  The "noted Argentine" Rosalind is referring to is Jorge Luis Borges, my favorite writer, who I will involve in anything if the opportunity arises. The line she quotes is from his story The Man on the Threshold ( _El Hombre en el Umbral_ ).


	2. Long Way Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night before taking Emporia, Daisy ruminates on the path that got her here, from Comstock House to Finkton and beyond. Also, I play it fast and loose with the in-game dates of Daisy's voxophone recordings, by which I mean I went fully against them. I just like the idea that she was recording over a long period of time, not all in one year. Serves the narrative better. Why not!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOY HOWDY I SURE DID NOT MEAN FOR THIS TO TAKE ALMOST THE WHOLE ENTIRE YEAR! I am just… so, so incredibly sorry for letting this drop for so long. Life got away from me, distractions cropped up, plus, you know, just a TON of depression, and before I knew it I had put this off until I was effectively trapped under a massive pile of guilt and inaction. But I never intended to give it up, so here we are, finally. I'm hoping I can keep to a better rhythm going forward. Profuse apologies for the wait, and thank you to anyone who’s stuck around in spite of it. This chapter is ridiculously long, I guess to compensate.
> 
> Again, see **Endnotes** for specific content warnings.

**-1912-**

Daisy's pretty sure she wasn't born angry, but she might as well have been.

Anger is an old friend, as natural as breathing when your momma teaches you young that people you never met before, people who don't even know you, are gonna hate you sure as look at you, and there ain't nothing you can do to change their minds. Anger is familiar; anger is safe.

More than anything, anger is like water on heat. It boils over, sure, but it simmers, too. And in Daisy it simmered for years.

"When I first seen Columbia, that sky was the brightest, bluest sky that ever was. Seemed like... Heaven. Then ya eyes adjusted to the light, and you saw that sea a' white faces lookin' _hard_ back atcha."

She frowns at the crackling voxophone as it strews out that tinny imitation of her own voice. Funny thing, the voxophone. Fancy contraption whitefolks like to use to record their every piddling thought. Lady Comstock used it every now and again. The so-called Prophet could often be heard shouting gospel into his in the small hours. Another fantastic Fink invention, not made for the likes of her.

 

"What's this?" she'd said when the strange, tautly-dressed redhead had handed it to her. Without awaiting an answer, she'd pressed the switch for playback, but had received only the gentle static of an unmarred record. "It's blank."

"Well, I should rather think it would be," the redhead had said. "Not much use to you otherwise."

"You want me to use it?" She'd looked the thing over, dubious, like it might somehow be a bomb.

"We find it likely that your voice will be a useful addition to the public record of things to come."

"What am I s'posed to _say_?"

"Anything you like. Anything that ought to be said. Whatever you say, will have been said, will have been _meant_ to be said. Don't worry yourself over it."

 

That had been her first interaction with Lutece. She can't even remember which of them it was. Perhaps they'd both been there, like usual, and her memory is simply blurring them together. Memory of them is always strange. Strange, too, how that interaction came about—that is, she can’t quite remember how. They would have been just about the first and last people outside the Vox she had any contact with in all this time. How did they find her, alone and all, how’d they get that _close_ , why wouldn’t she have fired on sight? She’s found it’s easy to forget reason when Lutece comes around. These questions would itch more if she weren’t already pretty well certain that the Luteces are their own breed of mystery, and that mystery’s somethin’ she don’t care to touch.

Doesn't much matter, anyway. It was a long while back—‘bout fifteen years ago, she reckons. She clicks her tongue at that. Sixteen—no, seventeen long, hard years she’s been with the Vox. Time eaten up in anger, blood, and fire. The whole of her twenties gone and she didn’t even notice. People ain’t s’posed to live this way.

She made a few scattered recordings after first receiving the voxophone—these early ones she’s now mulling over. For years the only ones who heard her voice were her own people. Hadn't been a need to make a record. Who else would listen? Eventually, though, just in the last couple years, she finally started seein’ the appeal. Now... now she has lots to say, and any mouthpiece she gets her hands on is gonna hear it.

It’s late, the moon close and bright, light coming through cracks in the shack-like bunker that’s become her base of operations. Daisy sits alone, hunched over the workbench where she’d been modding her shotgun ‘til her eyes wouldn’t see straight in the shadows, and now she creeps this cautious path down memory lane. Tomorrow’s a big day. Gotta be ready. Oughta be sleepin’, but there’s something mussing her thoughts too much, keeping her awake. Some kinda dread pitched deep in her gut, like somewhere down in her hard heart she knows something bad is on its way.

She swaps out records. Her second-ever recorded message has more meat to it, and she listens to it more often, probably so she has something more to frown about. It ain't about her lot in life, her cause, or her oppressors, at least, not the whole of them. It’s somethin' even nearer to her heart. It’s herself, held open and up to a light.

She sets the contraption and presses the playback switch.

"Days at Comstock House were simple," says her murky echo. "Hard work, sure, but simple. Wringin' the linens, scrubbin' the floors..." She hears herself chuckle. "Lady Comstock, she even had a kind word now and then. Almost enough to make me think I had a place in their world." She hears herself smirk. "God made foolish girls so he could have something to play with."

"Daisy, Daisy, Daisy," she mutters to herself, pulling the record back out and setting it in its sleeve. "Look at ya'self."

Woulda been 1897 or -98 when she recorded that, still so young and stupid. She wishes she _hadn't_ recorded it. The voxophone’s a trap that way. Thoughts ain't meant to last forever. They meant to be fleeting. They meant to change. She wishes she didn't have a record of a time when she said a single good thing about that house. Sarcastic, sure, and full-a' regret, but she knows the true meaning in that chuckle, that audible smirk. She missed those simple days once. Even as she called herself foolish for doin' so, she still missed 'em.

Now she knows a little better. That simplicity was poison. That blue sky, that Heaven, it’s all poison. They said kind words, gave her shelter and a so-called good life, all so she didn't have no reason to complain. So she was docile. A fattened pig. They set her up and knocked her down and had the gall to make her _miss_ that poison.

She swaps out records. Sometimes she claws away from looking back, but in the night she knows better. These hard memories and old hurts are what sustain her. Now more than ever, with only a few hours ‘til dawn and the move on Emporia, she needs a reminder of why she’s doin’ this. So she plays the recording that calls back that day, the day she woke up, got out, ran and hid. The day they betrayed her by fulfillin’ the promise of the rich white man’s selfishness and cruelty, and in so doing, in some bitter twist of fate, set her free. Freedom of circumstance, forced freedom, is barely freedom. She knows this. She will never pretend to be grateful.

Her voice plays back, and she listens with a grimace. "They argued something fierce at night, Lady Comstock and the Prophet. Could never make out what it was about from my bunk, though. After the worst, I seen she ain't left for mornin' prayer, so I crept upstairs to check in on her, and like a _fool_ , I lingered. 'Scullery maid' was what they called me when I walked into Comstock House. 'Murderer' was what they shouted when I ran out."

When anger is familiar, safe, and in a constant simmer, it’s easy to forget it’s there. You don’t recognize how angry you are, or maybe how angry you _oughta_ be, until it’s too late.

The day she was driven from Comstock House was the day the water boiled over, and it wasn't even her that got to turn up the heat.

 

**-1895-**

She is seventeen years old.

Days are long at Comstock House, leaving as little space for night as there is space in Daisy’s room. The House itself is enormous, staggering in its enormity, but most of it she never even seen. Slaves ain’t permitted in the part that makes up the most of it, the Founder headquarters. Plenty of room left over for the Prophet’s family, but all their battalion of slaves get is little rooms like this one—more a closet than a room, really; no windows, only a guttering bare-bulbed lamp for light, so she have to rely on the house’s many bells to know when to wake. The bed is small, a straw mattress done with coarse fabric, a bunk so near the ceiling that even a girl as little as her have to watch her head sitting up in the mornings. Nothin’ of storage but a narrow, stiff-drawered dresser shoved under the bed. Which suits Daisy fine. She don’t have many things to store.

Most nights she don’t have to chase after sleep. Worn out from those long, hard-working days, back aching, feet sore, hands scraped, head empty, too exhausted to remember dignity, to summon rage. Sleep is a way out, a locked door she otherwise never gets to have—no locks on slave quarters, no privacy for the subhuman. Most nights she’s asleep the moment she hits the mattress.

Some nights, though, the noise keeps her up. The Prophet raging with his burning brimstone voice, Lady Comstock’s words reduced to muffled wailing through the hardwood floors and gilded walls. Sure seems like they hate each other. Lady Comstock is as good a woman as Daisy could hope to work for, or so she suspects; the Prophet, she’s learned, you do your best to avoid. As his wife, Lady Comstock can never be so lucky.

Tonight is violent. Thuds and crashes accompany the usual hollering cacophony. A low keening cuts through it; Lady Comstock is weepin’ for sure. Daisy pulls the frayed edge of her solitary blanket up to her chin. What do these whitefolks got to fight about, anyway? They here livin’ their good life, safe and protected at the literal top of the world. If wealth and power gets you happiness, then why ain’t they _happy_ already?

Such thoughts sometimes lead to bitterness, but Daisy’s too tired for bitter tonight. She just wants to sleep. Something breaks—shatters, sounds like—one of the maids is gonna have to clean this tomorrow. Not her. She’s kept to the kitchen mostly. Long days, just scrubbin’ and scrubbin’. And this the only rest she gets. Why they got to do this now? Why can’t they let her sleep?

This is the worst it’s been in a while. Worst it’s ever been, maybe.

There’s another crash, and Lady Comstock screams, and Daisy rolls onto her side, clamping her pillow down over her head.

· · ·

That morning she’s late to rise. After the first bell goes she dozes, only a few minutes past, but a few minutes are the difference between getting breakfast (a cup of water and a single stale hominy biscuit) or not. This morning she misses it, skidding into the kitchen still tying her apron, only to be whipped on the knuckles by the cook and instructed to start laying out the china for the master and mistress’ morning meal. They’ll be home from prayer any minute now, no time to waste. It’s not her usual task, but she learned long ago to be ready for anything.

Doing her best to lay aside the yawning ache in her gut, Daisy hurries to the dining room, setting about her work as quick and neat as she knows how, and it’s while adjusting the position of the second fork that she spies the coat rack in the corridor beyond. The Prophet’s coat and hat gone like usual; Lady Comstock’s hat and shawl still hanging there, where they’d been since yesterday.

An unusual sight—the Lady never misses morning prayer, and no one’s made mention of her taking sick—and then Daisy remembers what she heard in the night, remembers it like a stone dropping into her stomach, like cold water spilling down the back of her neck. Only seventeen, often taken as younger on account of how small she is, but she knows—a girl has to know, especially a girl like her—what possibility awaits upstairs in the master’s bedchamber.

It’d be stupid to go an’ look. Stupid to do anything but keep her head down. That’s what they all say, the ones who survive, the ones who grow old. Keep ya head down, girl. Don’t make a ruckus. Don’t let them see you, not even for an instant.

She looks at the table. Setting’s done. She oughta go back to the kitchen for her next task. But she doesn’t.

Daisy sneaks upstairs, quick and quiet. It’s not a difficult business. It’s not often she’d be sent upstairs this time of day, but most wouldn’t think to question it. They all got better things to do than scold a girl on her way into trouble. All of them keepin’ their heads down, too; her mistakes are hers to make.

And she knows she’s made one, knows it the moment she opens that door.

It takes her several solid seconds to register what she’s seein’, which is the Lady Comstock, still in her nightdress, sprawled unnatural on the floor, blood pooled around her. Old blood, sticky and crusted into the rug. She knows this because, like a fool, she steps closer. She drops her to knees, hands trembling, overcome by the awful sight, her mistress lying dead and paler than a ghost, eyes wide open. Struck, it looks like.

Daisy’s not so stupid to reach out and touch, but when she finally wrenches her eyes away from that terror-stained face, she realizes it doesn’t matter, ‘cause she got close enough and that blood is on her apron now, a ruddy-brown smear.

She stands up quick and sharp and she turns around, gotta make it to a sink first, then get help, or maybe wait, maybe let someone else—

But it doesn’t matter, because he’s there. The Prophet. Father Comstock is there, lookin’ at her, steel in his eyes. He’s smilin’. Just a little smile, enough for her to see it before he switches automatic to a mask of grief and cries, "What have you done?"

 

What she _done_ is got seen. It doesn’t matter that any fool could see the woman been dead for hours, that she been killed in the night, that it had been a blow to the head made too high for little Daisy to reach, too hard for her to make empty-handed. It doesn’t matter that she could see he’d left his wife there, left her body to be found, knowin’ whoever did the finding was gonna get pinned with it. Doesn’t matter she saw him catch her, doesn’t matter she saw him smile. None of that matters because all that matters is the Prophet crying _murder_ and the dried-up blood on her apron and that not a soul in that house would have turned a sympathetic eye on her.

Just like that, the anger boils over. Like a cord stretched too tight, Daisy snaps. One minute she might have wept for her oppressor, for the loss of that false kindness; the next, she sees a man smile and point his damning finger, and that’s it. That’s all. No time to question. No time to think.

He’s not expecting her to run, and she has that going for her as she barrels all five feet of herself into and past him, practically ricocheting off the opposite wall as she careens down the corridor, knocking into a butler to better block Comstock’s path as she bolts down the stairs. She don’t know where she’s going. She don’t know this house. She knows this part of it, the corridor leading out into the courtyard, which’d be dropping herself direct into a trap, and the corridor that leads into the rest of it, where no slave has set foot.

No choice. She runs without looking back. She runs without a single thought to her only belongings, a necklace that belonged to her mother and the book she’d been usin’ to teach herself to read and write, both smuggled in and hidden in that dresser; those are behind her now, they ain’t hers no more. She hears more chasin’ her now, clattering down the hall, eager to please the master and catch the good lady’s killer. Don’t matter. None of it matters. Nothin’ but that door and her hand around its latch and her shoulder slamming into it, bruising terribly as she forces it open and flings herself through. Not even locked, so certain was the Prophet that none would be so bold as to bust through.

She’s in a strange new hallway now, lined with doors that could go anywhere, whether to escape or sure capture she don’t know. All around her they start opening up, white men stickin’ their heads out to see just what the commotion is about, so she keeps runnin’, she don’t stop for an instant, ‘cause she knows bone-deep that once you been seen, once you caused that ruckus, only way to survive is to keep moving.

Comstock’s voice pours out over a loudspeaker then, almost causing her to trip, the sheer sudden volume of it: “Brothers! There is a murderer in our midst! She killed your beloved First Lady and now she flees through our domain! Catch her! Stop her!”

Might as well be a death knell. All around her those stuffy old white men are waking up, shouts going up all around her as they spill outta their rooms, converging. None of them are as young and fast as she is, but her lungs are aching, she hasn’t run like this in months, probably years, and there’s enough of them that they’ll catch her soon enough.

Ahead of her one man steps out and just plants himself, waiting to catch her. If she stops, she’ll be dropping herself right into the growing frenzy behind her. So.

Only one shot at this. She puts on a final burst of speed as she lunges at that man, baring her teeth in a growl that becomes a wild grin as she sees it catch him off guard—he never expected the target, the enemy, the slave to come at him like a charging bull. He staggers back, taking that bait, blinking first, and that’s all she needs.

One-two-three. Momma taught her how to do this young and she ain’t never needed it until this very moment. Surprise (she punches him in the throat, knuckles cracking as she stops his voice and troubles his breathing), follow-through (she grabs his wrist and twists his arm as she drags him forward, at the same time driving her foot into his shin to kick his leg back, unbalancing him, using his weight against him), finish (she spins around and looses him, and he tumbles down between her and the mob, a gasping roadblock).

Like clockwork. Like she was born to do it. Out of the corner of her eye, through the door he’d opened, she catches light: an open window. She darts in and slams the door behind her and locks it. Won’t hold long at all.

The room doesn’t have much of use to her. Desks, cabinets. And that open window. Outside she sees blue sky and the tether that holds this island to the rest of Columbia. In the cracks of her memory, cutting through her racing, panicked thoughts, she remembers seeing a clipping from the Minuteman left out on the Prophet’s desk, right where she could read, nobody knowin’ she knew how—something about teens ridin’ the Sky-Line with little makeshift tools. A fast, stupid, reckless way to travel.

What is she if not fast and stupid and reckless?

Behind her the door cracks, about to be freed from its hinges. She looks around the room once more, her breath coming in sharp. There’s nothing here to help her. All she has is herself.

The door breaks, swinging open, but the men pushing their way in only catch a parting glimpse of Daisy as she hurls herself through the window, her apron yanked off and whipped over her head to catch the Sky-Line. An impossible maneuver, so impossible that when Daisy makes it she can’t even comprehend it. The plunge in her gut and the strain in her shoulders as she suddenly goes barreling down the steep incline of the Line, the wind whipping around her, the world moving too fast, it’s almost too much to bear. She chances a look back, seeing Comstock House in its full immensity, getting rapidly further and further away. She feels suddenly sick, whether because of the mode of travel or because of the full weight of what’s happened crashing down on her, she’s not sure—maybe a bit of both. No time for that. She looks ahead again. She’s heading for Emporia, a world she don’t belong in any better than the last. Word will travel fast of what she’s supposedly done.

She waits until the incline shallows and she’s veered enough behind a building that no one’ll see her, then she lets herself drop and lands rough. She lets her stained apron slip her grasp and watches it flutter away into the clouds. She gives herself only a moment to catch her breath before she keeps moving. She can’t stop to think. No time for panic, anger, violent illness. Gotta keep goin’, keep goin’ until she’s somewhere they won’t, can’t, don’t know to look.

 

_One day, ain't nobody notice me. Then they think I done for Lady Comstock, and well, everybody notice me. I head for Finkton, and I hide, I hide deep. The more they look, the deeper I go. Only thing a coloured child can count on is the fact they invisible._

 

**-1902-**

She is twenty-four years old, and it’s seven years since she reached Finkton where nobody knew her, except _everybody_ knew her and she was a hero before she even got started. Seven years overcoming fear for the sake of herself and the sake of others, letting that fear turn to rage, growing angrier and angrier until anger grew up over everything else, and anger was all that was left. Seven years hiding in the crowd, starting a movement, or maybe just a movement taking root around her. She was the easy and obvious target for it: young, smart, mad as hell and tough as nails. She’d escaped the most powerful man in Columbia, and his lie had made her a fearful demon in the eyes of all their oppressors. Most of the People didn’t even care if the lie was true or not; some seemed to believe it was. All that mattered was she’d become something more than an escaped slave. She’d become a symbol.

And it’s been a little under two years since the fire in Fink Manufacturing. Sometime in the night that fire started raging—Columbia papers blamed it on “worker error” but ain’t no worker that clumsy with his life, and ain’t no worker got access to Devil’s Kiss, neither—and to save themselves, or maybe just to save themselves the trouble, Fink’s firefighters cut the building loose, untethering it and leaving the fire to consume all there was without spreading to the rest of the city.

Hundreds of people died. Trapped like you’d trap vermin. You could hear the screaming, smelled the burning flesh and hair all across Finkton. Back when it happened, it had been a hard awakening for the Vox Populi. They’d thought they were awake already. But it wasn’t ‘til then that determination really turned to fury, that readiness became thirst. Two hundred and thirty-six dead and no one gave a damn, and no one but them was gonna change it. So the movement grew, and Daisy found herself speaking more and more—not just as Daisy, but as _their leader_ , the voice of the Vox. The more anger she had, the more she found she had to say. And they listened.

Around that time, she mostly spoke through bullhorns and secret radio networks; once in a while into her voxophone. Around that time, she recorded: _When you forced deep underground, well, you see things from the bottom up. And down at the bottom of the city, I saw a fire burning. The fire's got heat aplenty, but it ain't got no mouth. Daisy... now she got herself a mouth big enough for all the fires in Columbia._

 

It is just after dawn on the 23rd of July, and she stands on a makeshift pedestal in front of a crowd of her people, all of them packed into a narrow alley in Shantytown. They’re cheering for her, their fists raised in the air, going quiet when they see her raise the bullhorn to her lips.

“Brothers and sisters,” she says, doing her best to ignore the ever-disorienting reverberation of her voice. “This is a great day. A momentous day. You all know why we here. You can probably guess about what time it is—that big clock in Finkton ‘bout to ring six, I suspect.” She makes a big show of checking her empty pocket for a nonexistent watch before giving them all a big shit-eating grin. Enough time doin’ this, and she knows how to play the crowd. “I reckon it’s time for most of you to be gettin’ to work!”

This is returned with a whoop of laughter and vocal disagreement.

“Yeah!” she continues, playing off their energy. “Gotta get up to those mines, into those factories, breathin’ all that smoke and dust and poison, breakin’ your backs! Killin’ yourselves for the rich white man, for his machines, and all for what? Not a place of your own. Not a life of your own. Not even enough food to feed your families!”

They roar back at that, every one of them desperate, hungry, and raw, each pressed to his limit.

She gives them a moment to come back down, pacing around on her little stage. “Yeah,” she says. “I don’t think so. Not today. Today we strike. Today we shut them down, and we _stay_ shut down, until—what?”

They shout a lot of things back at her. She hears words like _freedom, food, liberty, justice,_ _death,_ and too many others to make out. Again she waits for them to simmer down before raising her bullhorn. “Until one of two things happens,” she says, “either they give us the basic respect we all, as human beings, _deserve—_ or this whole damned city comes apart until she crashes into the ocean.”

Another shout goes up, and she continues over them: “Because without us, Columbia don’t thrive! Without us, Columbia ain’t shit! They _need_ us! They treat us like animals so they don’t have to admit how much, but their precious city runs on our blood, our sweat, our broken bones and starving bellies, and _we deserve respect!_ ”

The swell of voices reaches a crescendo that is enough to rattle her stage. She pauses for a moment, taking it in, their fervor, their righteous anger, whipped up into a fury by her speech. Some might call it a sermon, but she recoils from that word and all that it implies. Something ought to be said about that. She glances to the right of her pedestal and sees Josiah Cross, her friend and the official Vox journalist: a tall, slender man even darker than her, his hair neatly shorn, his clothes a little nicer than everyone else’s. As per usual he’s scribbling furiously in his notebook, copying her down, hopefully without too many embellishments. The way he writes it, The Voice is almost as sensationalist a publication as The Minuteman. Daisy has no interest in interfering with the freedom of their rogue press, but sometimes the thing he makes her out to be… well, it’s the sort of thing that would give a sermon.

The noise having lulled back down, Daisy faces the throng again. “Now, I ain’t no prophet,” she says. “I ain’t no lamb, no martyr, no holy warrior. If I had an interest in telling you how to think, what to feel, what was right and wrong, I’d be no better than Comstock. That’s a King sittin’ on his throne. That ain’t freedom. I believe in the individual. I believe in the _people_. That’s you. That’s _us_. That’s who I am. Who _we_ are.”

She looks up, taking in the rooftops of Shantytown and the clouds beyond. “Seventeen days ago Columbia seceded from the Union and we took up to the sky, where there’s no law but the law we make. Comstock’s been givin’ speeches left and right ever since, goin’ on about how we a sovereign nation now, we got to stand for ourselves, and all that bunk. Ain’t none of them standin’ for nobody. But today _we_ gonna stand. We gonna show ‘em once and for all that we ain’t gonna take this no more. We gonna show ‘em that _we_ are part of Columbia, and we gonna fight for that. We gonna take this fight to the heart of Finkton, and no matter what they throw at us, _we stand!_ ”

She lowers the bullhorn and raises her fist, and all across the sea of clamoring voices she sees every fist raised in return.

The crowd begins to move out, led by rows of Vox gunners at the back, everyone arming up with the weapons they’ve been smuggling for the past several months. Today they do not intend to ride quietly into the factories as usual. This is going to be loud, and there is going to be blood. It’s gonna be on both sides. Daisy knows that. She sets her jaw, watching her friends and fellows move out to what will certainly be a whole lotta death, and she wonders, is this right? Will it have been worth it? Will it be enough?

· · ·

Fink Manufacturing is on fire, again. Fink’s men met them head-on, denied them even the option to negotiate before they started shooting. Before long the ringing in Daisy’s ears becomes a realized, visceral ringing, the ringing of bells, heralding not the vain glory of the church but the violent intrusion of the police. Their ships are descending all around them, lights beaming over the crowd, the voice of Chief Jefferson Poole himself thundering down:

“Attention, workers! Stand down! This is your only warning!”

“Aw shit, Daisy,” says Cross as he stares up above. He’s stayed close this whole time; a slight man, not a fighter, but determined to be present. “This about to go belly up.”

“They ain’t even gonna hear our demands,” Daisy mutters, staring upward in a mix of adrenal anticipation and childlike disappointment, as if this was ever gonna go any other way. “They never were.”

He puts his hand on her arm, and grips when she tries to pull away, drawing a fiery glare that don’t even phase him. She doesn’t let nearly anyone touch her like this, but Cross is different.

“We got to go, girl,” he says.

“No!” She reels back, and he hangs on. He’s not strong, but he’s got a good foot of height on her and that counts for something. “Are you crazy? What’d I just say? We got to stand! We got to fight!”

“They do, maybe.” He starts tugging, like he means to drag her. “You got to get somewhere safe. Police don’t know you’re with us yet. We got to keep it that way ‘til you’re ready to be known.”

All around them the people are seething, some already firing up at the airships. The police are jumping down into the fray, equipped with strange devices they never seen before, metal gauntlets with hook attachments. New weapons, new toys for beating back the workers.

“I ain’t abandoning this fight, Cross.” Daisy reaches out with her free hand and grabs the pistol right off of his belt, pulling back the hammer and pressing the barrel against his shoulder. “I can’t turn my back on them. You let me go now.”

“Naw, Daisy.” In his writing, Cross is excitable, given to theatrics, but in this moment, with a gun pressed on him and the specter of brutality looming like a cloud blocking out the sun, he’s calm as can be. He wraps his free hand around the barrel of the gun to show her how much she don’t scare him. “I know you want to fight. But you too important to this cause. It dies without you. You hear me? It _dies_.”

She hesitates, and he succeeds in nudging the gun back down, succeeds again in pulling her along, pushing their way through the crowd. Everyone makes room when they who he’s leading. “We need you, Daisy,” he says over his shoulder, barely audible over the roar and crash of voices and bodies. “All of us. You got to _live_ , girl. As long as you can, you got to live.”

She turns once more to look at the police as they spread through the crowd; there’s enough bodies between them that they don’t spy her, but as she watches she sees those hooks start to spin, and sees one of the officers lunge at one of her people, a man she knows, a big, gentle man named Henry Cole; she sees those spinning hooks rear back, then forward as the officer drives them down into—

 _No_.

She feels a lurch in her gut at the sight of what they’re doin’ to poor Henry, to more than just him. She hears Cross cry out, having stopped to look, before he breaks into a run, pulling her along and meeting no resistance. She runs with him, resolve shattered, heart broken, breath coming in hot and hard and heavy. Cross cuts a path through their people, shouting as he goes: “Watch out, they got new weapons—they got handheld weapons, don’t get close!” Daisy can’t tell if it makes a difference, if anyone can make his warning out. She hears those instruments shearing in the distance, can’t block out the image of what it is they do.

As the crowd thins out around them Daisy realizes they have no egress. The elevators are shut down and the buildings have been detached again, containing the threat like before. Cross is still pulling her toward the platform edge, but he’s starting to put this together himself, slowing a bit.

“Damn, what—” He looks back at her, then his eyes go wide and he reels back in terror over something behind her. “Daisy—!”

She’s still holding his pistol, and as she turns she don’t even hesitate, just fires at the uniform hurtling toward her. The sun glints off the silver gauntlet as he goes down, crumpling at her feet. Daisy stares at the body for only a moment before she kneels down to yank the thing off his arm, eyeing it over.

“What the hell are those things?” Cross says, panting heavily.

“Don’t know. But we get this back to our people, maybe we can make our own. Or figure out how to smuggle ‘em.” She looks up at him, then past him at a low dip in the Sky-Line that leads down to Shantytown.

“Hold up...” She fits the device onto her own arm and tugs the handle, watching the hooks spin for a moment, releasing again and looking up at the Sky-Line.

“Both of you, stand down!” shouts another officer, struggling to aim his pistol between them both. Looks like he’s not totally comfortable with this thing on his arm, like he’d rather have two hands to shoot. Daisy gazes at him with an odd, quiet calm, then gets to her feet slowly.

“By the Prophet, you’re—” He stares at her. She can see him trembling. “ _Fitzroy_!”

“Don’t go tellin’ nobody now,” she says, and shoots him quick, not to kill but to knock him down. He cries out, drops his gun, struggles to get the hook off his arm. Cowardly little shit who don’t even know how to swear right. Daisy steps up close to him, not completely aware of how bad she’s shakin’, how hard the anger in her is boilin’ now, how bad she want to make somebody hurt for what she just saw. “Gonna keep that quiet, little man?”

“I swear I won’t tell!” he moans, looking up at her like she’s some big monster with fangs and claws and fiery eyes. That’s all they all see. Not a woman, not a person, but some creature, some beast. “Oh god,” he begs, “p-please, please don’t kill me. I have a family!”

“Yeah?” She stands over him, studying his ugly, sweaty, pale face. “So did I.”

She turns the hook on and jams it forward, and behind her she hears Cross scream.

· · ·

_**POLICE FAIL TO SILENCE VOX POPULI** _

_Dozens of striking workers were killed today by police thugs armed with brutal new weapons. Many of the remaining strikers were thrown in jail, leaving their families uncertain how to put food on the table._

_Several police were also killed by armed strikers. Our legal expert, John Goldman, calls for an end to the violence. “We must negotiate a peaceful resolution to our differences.”_

 

“Peaceful resolution,” says Daisy contemptuously, throwing the paper down. “Shee-it.”

“I quoted him, I didn’t endorse it,” Cross mutters, wincing as he rubs at his bruised ribs. Once they’d both been armed with the gauntlets—Sky-Hooks, they’re apparently called—Daisy had showed him their second use, magnetizing to the Sky-Lines, letting them sail back down to their neck of the woods. Cross had injured himself coming down. Not as spry as her. The rest of their people, those who’d survived, had eventually been allowed to come crawling back. Night’s passed and it’s a new day, but they’re all still feeling their hurts.

“Quotin’ him’s enough,” she says coldly. She stares around the room for a moment before getting to her feet, all energy but nowhere to go. She feels an unscratchable itch under her skin, the unbearable sensation of failure. She wants to break something. “Goldman don’t know shit.”

“He’s just about the only person working to legitimize us.”

“We don’t _need_ legitimizing,” she snaps. “Peace ain’t gonna happen for us, not when they respond like they did yesterday.”

“We went in with guns blazing,” Cross points out.

“And if we hadn’t we’d have been slaughtered all the same, with no way to fight back. And you _know_ it, Cross.” She paces agitatedly around his small office. “The last thing we need is some white man telling us how to do our fight. He’ll turn on us if he gets reason, and sooner or later, he _will_. People who cry for peace when things ain’t equal are just tryin’ to show off. Prove they’re better’n you. But that’s the whole point of all of this: they _ain’t_ better.”

Cross sighs and rests his elbows on his cluttered little desk, lacing his fingers together delicately and resting his chin on them. He’s studying her, gears turning. She hates that look.

“ _What_?” she says sharply when he fails to speak up.

He breathes in slow. “You killed that man,” he says. “Not quick. Not with mercy. Whole day’s past and you _still_ got his blood on you.” He sits back, still fixing her with that steady gaze. “It was an ugly thing, Daisy.”

She stares at him, wholly taken aback, but just like he’s about the only person who gets to grab her like he did, he’s about the only person who gets to talk to her like he’s doin’. “What they doin’ to us is ugly,” she says, quiet and curt.

“A half-assed dodge if I ever heard one.”

“I’m _angry_ , Cross.” She goes back to pacing, though there’s precious little room to pace. “They’re the ones murdering us, keepin’ us down, makin’ us feel like we nothin’. We don’t have room for peaceful resolution. We don’t have room for mercy. You saw what they did to Henry.”

“That man didn’t do it.”

“He’s part of the machine that _did!_ ” She whips around, facing her friend. “Why you interrogatin’ me on this? You know as well as me, this was always gonna be messy. And no one asked me to be here so I could do fancy speeches about taking the high road. The high road’s only for people who can afford it.”

“I know, I know.” Cross raises his hands. “Omelets and eggs and all that. I’m just sayin’—maybe _we_ ain’t better, either.”

She huffs out something like a laugh and looks away for a few moments, collecting herself. “Nobody’s better than anyone else. That’s what it _means_.”

“It just don’t sit right with me,” he says. “They treat us like animals, and then we turn around and act like animals.”

Daisy takes a moment to swallow that, then looks back at him, meeting his gaze without flinching. “Animals don’t understand revenge,” she says in a low voice. “Or right and wrong. They don’t have to live with consequences. You think I ain’t gonna have nightmares about this? You think I’m glad my lot in life calls for me to kill? Let me tell you something.” She comes forward and plants her hands on his desk, leaning down to maintain eye contact. “My momma was the only family I had. Only friend, too. I shoulda had a big family, lots of friends, but instead everyone I coulda known kept dyin’, and my momma had to work herself raw just to keep me alive. They take everything from us and tell us we deserve it. Make us believe the story that we’re ugly, that we’re beasts. My momma told me everyday that I was beautiful, that I was smart, that I was gonna do great things. And I believed her. When they shot her dead and took me away, I still believed her. When they sent me here, I hung onto it like it was the only thing gonna keep me from drowning. Now I been put at the front of his movement, and you wanna know why? It’s cause I still believe that, I still believe we’re more than they say. We’re _humans_. Humans kill. They fight. They get angry. Animals ain’t allowed to be angry. They got to be good. Domesticated. If they get angry they get put down. But me?”

She steps back, allowing Cross a bit more space, though he’s still staring at her, expression guarded.

“I’m angry,” she says. “And ain’t no one gonna take that away from me. I’ll be as angry as I want. I’ll do with it what I want. I ain’t gonna be perfect. I ain’t gonna be docile. I’m gonna be me.”

He keeps staring at her, staring and staring, and as she waits for a reply Daisy starts to feel increasingly exposed, annoyed with his silence. Just as she’s about to snap at him for it, he surprises her by chuckling lightly and says, “Damn, girl, you gotta warn me if you gonna go off like that. I gotta know when to take notes.”

She smirks, relaxing a little. “I talk too much for your paper anyway,” she says. “Just tell ‘em this: Don’t waste time wishing you wasn’t angry. Use it. Fight, so your children don’t have to know that anger.”

“That’s good,” he says, jotting it down. “Probably gonna pretty it up a little.”

“You do what you gotta do, Cross,” she sighs. “Just remember. When you fightin’ with anger, it ain’t gonna be anything but ugly. I will not apologize for it. They made us angry. They made us afraid. I intend to turn that back on them. That’s just how it gotta be.”

 

_The one thing people need to learn is that fear is the antidote to fear. I don't want to be a part of their world. I don't want to be a part of their culture, their politics, their people. The sun is setting on their world, and soon enough, all they're gonna see is the dark._

 

**-1909-**

As it turns out, the movement does outgrow John Goldman and his rhetoric about that mythical ‘peaceful resolution,’ so in the end, after enough struggle and enough loss, Daisy grows tired of ignoring him and kicks him to the proverbial curb.

Later, Vox intelligence reports would pin Goldman for what happened, would find that, bitter at his exile from the group, he promptly turned on them, on Daisy in particular, who he apparently believed to be poison to the cause. It was as she’d always expected, but by then it wouldn’t matter. He’d be long gone, and Daisy already has enough vengeance on her plate without adding the likes of him.

She is thirty-one years old the day they arrest her. A simple tip-off allows the police to swarm her location and catch her unawares, rendering her unconscious without hesitation. When she comes to she’s in Comstock House again. Almost like the last fourteen years didn’t happen, or didn’t count.

At first calm is an elusive goal. This is not a part of Comstock House she ever visited before. This is the part that’s devoted to research, the subject of which she only heard whispers about; something about ‘observing the sufferers of sin,’ which sounds euphemistic for a thousand possible tortures. They restrain her, put in an observable space like a zoo animal, and at first she reacts as such, snarling and snapping and struggling for the entertainment of the man in the white coat who studiously notes her every move down on his clipboard. Calm is forced on her with medications, and lost on waking again. A cycle that repeats itself for the entirety of her first twenty-four hours in captivity.

It takes her those twenty-four hours to slow herself, showing defiance but not panic. She is aware that in a way this is no different from her behavior during her period of servitude here; straining to appease or to impress. Forcing herself to prove that she is not an animal, when in fact she has every right to be angry, to rage, to scream. There is nothing base or animalistic about the human desire for freedom, but people like the man in the white coat can’t understand that from their high perches, heads lost in the clouds of imagined superiority. Still, her show of cold quiet does have an effect. The man in the white coat comes closer, sits beside her, talks to her, or rather asks her questions. She learns his name is Dr. Francis Pinchot.

“Are you aware you’ve been sentenced to execution?” he asks her.

 _Is she aware_. Like asking if she understands the language. If she possesses enough baseline intelligence to comprehend reality. She says nothing.

He jots something down. “On May 14th—that’s in five days—you are to be immolated, and your body thrown from the city.”

She stares at the doctor, and the doctor stares back for a moment, though his eyes are never as steady, flicking over her person while she remains as still and stonelike as possible.

“Immolated means to be burned,” he says after a moment.

Her mouth twitches in the suggestion of a smirk, and they go on regarding each other in varying states of intensity.

Finally, seeming put out, he heaves a sigh and reaches down into the leather satchel that sits beside his chair, producing from it the small red book they took off her during her arrest. _The People’s Voice_ , so-emblazoned in fine gold lettering. Her manifesto. Pinchot looks it over avidly, like it’s a once-living specimen he now has the privilege to dissect.

“Am I to understand _you_ wrote this?” he says.

His skepticism on the subject doesn’t exactly surprise her. She used lotsa big words in that book, and he’s still struggling to accept that someone like her could possibly know what _immolate_ means.

Not to be deterred, Dr. Pinchot clears his throat and opens the book sharply, cracking its spine. “All right,” he mutters to himself, scanning the pages until he finds a phrase he seems to like. He smiles, the first time she’s seen it, and it ain’t a pretty sight: all teeth and insincerity. It’s the smile of a man who has heard a child tell an artless joke. Indulgent, gingerly amused.

“ _You had their knife in your back since the day you were born_ ,” he reads. “A competent metaphor. Not particularly subtle, though, is it? Like much of your rhetoric: needlessly inflammatory, dangerously provocative. If you cast your readers as automatic victims, they are _liable_ to believe themselves owed something, don't you agree?”

The criticism, as idiotic and arrogant as it is, can't help but sting a little. It ain't that she's concerned about _the esteemed Dr. Pinchot's_ lofty opinion; it's the bullying way he does it, with her tied to her convictions of not talking, not giving him the satisfaction. It means she got to hear his arrogance out with dignity and grace, and he gets to believe he's _convinced_ her of something.

Sniffing smugly, he flips to a new page, scans for a moment, then reads: “ _It falls on us, since those before did so little..._ ” He chuckles, but offers no comment as he continues to scan the passage. “ _They bowed their heads and took the lash. Well, we'll take it no longer._ Really, madam.” He lowers the book, fixes her with look like he fancies himself a father figure. “You do your people no credit, stirring them up like this. To be a willing servant is honorable. To _serve others_. 'Tis what I do, after all. We all serve, in our way. Surely it's only selfishness that causes some to resist.”

 _Surely_ , he says, leaving room for doubt. It's an open invitation for debate, and if the doctor can be given any credit at all it's in how well he tantalizes. His ploys are transparent, though; his overconfidence betrays him and he dangles the meat too close, too easy to catch. He's made it too obvious how much he wants to hear her speak. So it's Daisy who has the power here, the choice of whether and when to give him what he wants.

He wants to hear her defend her position, but she won't. It needs no defending; for all his superiority, Daisy _knows_ where the moral truth lies. He can find his way there himself, or not at all.

Sure enough, Pinchot's failure to get a rise from her sets him on edge. The smile slips, and he's soon thumbing through the pages faster.

“When was it you first styled yourself as this... freedom fighter?” he says, subtly sneering the phrase. “The desire to create chaos cannot be born into a person. How, then, did you come to identify as an anarchist? Was there some outside influence? An external corruption? Or do you hold that it is a part of your animal biology?”

He glances at her but cannot hold the gaze. He don't like the hardness of her stare. He shifts in his seat and clears his throat, a little production of discomfort. White folks always gotta let you know when they feel uncomfortable, it always comes as some kinda surprise to them.

“Perhaps the book tells the tale?” he says curtly, continuing to search its pages. “ _They say I_ foment _violence_...” He trails off for a moment, studying the passage as though it might answer him. “ _But that's a lie_ ,” he continues. “ _I only ask you to react to it. Only a fool endures an unjust lash_.” He looks at her sharply. “ _React_ to it?” he repeats. “I ask you, woman, what violence is done by inviting the lesser into one's home, providing them work, sustenance—” By now he seems to expect her silence, and doesn't wait for a reply. “ _You think that the rich man, the white man fought alone in Peking? No_.” He scoffs as though offended, but frowns tightly as he continues: “ _You were there too, knee-deep in the blood of men who ought've been our brothers_. Is this an admission of collusion with the Chinese?”

Daisy sits relaxed, waiting him out. His agitation is her stability. It is entertaining, at least, to watch him struggle to right himself so often; so much effort poured into the appearance of effortlessness.

“ _Our sole objective is for The People to be heard_ ,” he reads slowly. “ _It's not our fault they've been angry so long_.” He lingers for a moment, eyes tracking down the page, then shuts the book gently, with far greater care than he's handled it so far. He looks at her. “Then whose?” he asks. “You make assumptions without proofs. Metaphors without justification. You cannot simply rail into the darkness and expect comprehension.”

Dr. Pinchot has never truly fought for a thing in his life, Daisy expects. He tires so easily. The game is not fun for him, and so he no longer wishes to play.

He watches her for a moment, then he sighs heavily. “I merely wish to understand.”

She lets him soak in that for several moments more before she raises her chin. “Then you got to accept that there are things you _don't_ understand,” she says steadily. “Answers you ain't got.”

The look of slow-dawning bewilderment that crosses the doctor’s face is certainly satisfying to see, but it does come at a cost. When she roared and fought, she was easily written off as the dumb beast he wanted to see. When she held silent, she held the power. Having now spoken, calm and measured and full of insights he didn't expect her to have, the balance has shifted once again. She'll have to fight to keep conversational control, without ever letting on she's fighting for it. Even worse, she can tell by the way he's now looking at her that her words on the page are no longer a vague specter to his curiosity. She, herself, has truly become what he considers a fearful and intriguing puzzle to be solved: a black woman with the power of thought.

“So you're ready to speak,” he says eventually.

Daisy makes a show of considering the question. “Depends,” she says. “You ready to listen?”

The smile returns, just a hint of it, which is in some ways worse than seeing it in full. “That is what I'm here to do.”

· · ·

Pinchot does listen, just as much as he counters and questions and provokes. He oversees other sorts of examination as well, experiences that cause her to sublimate herself completely, stifling herself like a candle for fear of losing her tenuous grasp on the composure it took her so long to achieve. After hours at a time of being studied and prodded, Pinchot returns for their little conversations. The interviews alone would be enough to exhaust her. Sleep is as elusive as it was when she was a frightened little girl, brought into the household to serve, so many years ago. She used to lie awake missing her momma and wonderin' _why why why_. Now she's not so little, and not wondering so hard, but she is tired. The effort of performing for him, constantly playing the part of a willing test subject, rising above his jabs, cornered into proving something even when she has nothing to prove, it's all a weight that comes bearing down on her more and more.

Yesterday he'd had her take a test designed—by himself, he'd boasted to her—to rate one's intelligence. She'd done it like a good little student, and she hadn't seen him again nor suffered any further indignity for the rest of the day. Unusual, but a welcome respite.

Today he stands at the threshold of her cell. He's holding her book again.

“Miss Fitzroy,” he says. He's shown her a base level of courtesy as a reward for her cooperation, but now it seems even more pointed than before. He stands there, hesitating, waiting for something. Like for her to, what, welcome him in?

“Pinchot,” she mutters. They have an established rapport of convenience by now. “Actin' kinda strange today.”

“Yes,” he acknowledges. He steps inside and takes his usual seat. It's a few moments before he speaks further, and she waits. She rarely speaks first.

“I'm afraid I have some bad news,” he says.

“Doctor,” she says, tired of his evasiveness, “I've lived a life harder than you can imagine. Tomorrow I'm to be set afire and flung off the city. You think you got somethin' worse for me?”

He sometimes likes her witty little quips, treating them like particularly clever tricks performed by some animal, but today he continues to stare at the book in his hands. He draws a breath, lets it out, then says, “I've received word from my superiors. They've been... reviewing your case as I report on it. They seem to feel it best that...” Finally his eyes flick up to meet hers. “I am informed that you are to be lobotomized, Miss Fitzroy. Prior to the immolation.”

Ah.

Since the day of her arrest, after they'd drugged her into docility, after she'd gotten the railing out of her system, she's refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing her true self. Through examination and interrogations, fear and anger over what will be done to her, she has kept herself buried. Immolation was a distant threat; she hasn't let the horrifying truth of it penetrate her. It will happen when it happens. She's had time to brace.

This, she was not anticipating. Caught unprepared, she cannot keep a reactive twitch, and she turns her gaze away from Pinchot lest he become a pinpoint for the rage that now threatens to boil over once again.

Take her mind away. Force her to become the beast they see in her. After so much, Daisy did not think there was anything left that could shake her apart. But they found it. They found it.

“Daisy?” Pinchot says, and the sudden, unexpected, and unearned appropriation of her first name startles a sharp glance out of her. She is quick to pull back. She mustn't let him see it, not any of her. He has no right to it.

She forces a smirk, manages a huff of a laugh. “Suppose it'll all be the same in the end,” she says.

He is quiet for a time. Daisy hates that quiet. Three days now he's pestered her with all manner of questions—her history, her views, her writing, her movement—pried and pried out the heart of her life, dug into the core of her beliefs, and refused to believe any of it. Can't accept the Founders or the Prophet as anything other than saints. Congratulates himself for working so hard to reach an understanding with his captive. Keeps credulity at arm's length. Daisy's not surprised by any of it. She knows the type. Like John Goldman—the well-meaning, soft-hearted white man who thinks a kindly disposition is all that counts. Barely even worth being angry about.

But this—silence and grief in the face of _her_ tragedy, a tragedy he's abetted—it threatens to shatter her resolve. Her eyes slip shut as she counts her breaths, waiting him out.

“It will be a sin,” he says at last, and she opens her eyes to find him looking at her. “Miss Fitzroy—your mind is a remarkable thing. I wanted you to know... you possess a genius-level intelligence. My test—you scored higher than I. I designed it, and you outstripped me easily. To tell the truth, I—I have been up all night, going over this.” He taps the cover of _The People's Voice_ lightly. “I have it read it through and through again. I have considered what you've said in our interviews. I see now how obtuse I have been. The worst sort of fool. Yours is a beautiful mind, Daisy. It merits _study_ , celebration, not this thoughtless destruction.”

By the end of his little speech, he's still looking at her; only now does he become self-conscious enough to avert his gaze.

Daisy stares at him with a dull expression. The revelation means little to her. Her momma taught her everything she could before they took her away forever. She taught herself after that. She always been quick, clever, and keen. To be declared 'genius' by the self-aggrandizing rubric of some white man who's already proven he don't know shit about the world is nothing. It _means_ nothing. Tests, scores, lofty comparisons—they aren't a part of her world, the world that matters.

 _Merit_ , he says. He may think he sees her as an equal now, now that she's proven to have worth he can comprehend on his arbitrary scale for it, but he's still talking about her like a thing. And he sure as shit ain't moving to halt the fate he's just told her of. What good is belated appreciation of her personhood if it don't come with _action_? And what good is appreciation if it don't apply to anyone else? What would he think of those of her people who aren't geniuses at all?

His remorse is as clear as his infatuation, and just as useless to her. Rage is action. Remorse is just _sorry_. All the sorrys in the world won't mean shit when she's a burning husk of herself.

Pinchot's looking at her again, a shade of unease in his expression. He expects a reply. She won't give one. It was not earned.

“I am sorry,” he says like a self-fulfilling prophecy, “for what this monstrous world has done to you. For what it will yet do.” He stares at his hands, at the book he still clutches. The sorry is his own as much as it is anyone's. Sorry he won't get to have this clever pet anymore. Sorry he got a reason to feel guilt. “They would make of you the monster they see. To erase what they cannot accept.”

Well, he's ain't wrong. At least they can agree on something. Daisy'd laugh if her anger weren't still cooling and calcifying. She studies him idly.

“ _Truth will out all lies in the end_ ,” she says when she's through making him wait.

Again, he meets her eyes. He recognizes the quote, of course—she put it at the beginning of her manifesto. For a long, bitterly satisfying moment of palpable discomfort, he cannot seem to conjure a reply.

“Yes,” he says finally, with an air of defeat. “I suppose it will.”

· · ·

The day of her scheduled death, a bomb detonates prematurely in the plaza where the immolation was to take place. Part of a larger operation intended for the execution ceremony itself, the early explosion causes both the death of a Vox brother and the necessary fast-tracking of the plan itself. In the ensuing chaos, a break-in is initiated, and an escape set in motion.

“Cross?!” Daisy jumps to her feet as her gangly friend barges into her cell, accompanied by at least five others. “What the goddamn hell are you doin' here?”

“Please, save your overwhelming gratitude for later,” he says, flashing a harried smile. “We got five minutes, tops.”

“No, I mean—why _you_?” She's already out the door, following them through twisting corridors. “This ain't exactly press work, Cross.”

“No ma'am,” he agrees, and hands her a pistol. “But I started plannin' this operation the day they took you and hell if I was about to let someone else have all the fun.”

“You damn fool,” she mutters, but she's smiling, for the first time in five days, really smiling. She tucks the pistol in the waistband of her trousers, feelin' like herself once more with that comforting weight and the presence of friends.

Their party rounds the corner and then comes to a messy halt as it nearly collides with the man coming opposite. They raise their guns, and he throws up his hands and cries in the voice Daisy's come to know too well, “ _Wait_!”

They do wait, but not for him—they're waiting for Daisy, heads turned expectantly toward her, their leader once again.

Daisy regards Dr. Pinchot for a moment, her hands tucked deep into her pockets, and he looks back, eyes wide with fright. As ever, Daisy says nothing. She forces him to speak first.

He does, falteringly: “I—I can help you. Lead you out. I know a path, there won't be any guards. Please.” He looks between the gunmen, then, imploringly, into her eyes. “Let me help you.”

Cross looks at her, she can feel the dubiousness radiating off him, but she keeps her eyes on the doctor. “If you would be so kind,” she says, nice and quiet.

Pinchot protects his life well, leading them on a bloodless escape. When they reach the passage leading out of this miserable building, Pinchot turns to declare it their exit, and finds that Daisy has already drawn her pistol. Funny, how pale these white men get.

The man sure can _talk_. He babbles endlessly, pleading for his life, and when she does nothing but stare him down, he says, “But— _why_?”

“You held me here,” says Daisy, low and dangerous. “Poked and prodded me. Visited tortures on me. Treated me like a zoo animal, a sideshow attraction, an experiment. All that, and you had the audacity to tell me you _understood_. You woulda let them break me today. You don't understand shit. You ain't earned shit.”

She pulls back the hammer of the gun.

“N-no, Daisy, _please_ ,” he begs, a coward to the last.

“Daisy,” says Cross urgently, looking over his shoulder. “We got to go.”

She ignores him. This is the one time Pinchot will ever deserve her undivided attention. “You think you're different from the rest of them because you took a _liking_ to me?” she sneers. “You're no better than a zookeeper. A _progressive_ zookeeper, sure, who always brings an extra banana.” She chuckles, and he can only stare at her. “How's that for a competent metaphor?”

She fires, and his body slumps down hard against the wall. Cross grabs her arm and hurries her down the passage to freedom, her second time to freedom from Comstock House.

 

_**DAISY ESCAPES EXECUTION!** _

_Daisy Fitzroy is emancipated from bondage once more, thanks to careful planning and the noble sacrifice of one of our comrades. Several explosive devices were hidden throughout Comstock Plaza ahead of her scheduled execution. While we cannot know what accident set off one bomb ahead of schedule, it allowed Daisy to escape amid the confusion, though at the cost of the life of the anonymous operative caught in the blast._

_Addressing her rapt followers, Daisy praised the bomber's sacrifice. "Don't lament your brother's passing. He died well. He died with a purpose. For the blow we struck today, I'd have gladly offered up a hundred men."_

 

“You sure about that quote?” Cross asks after she straightens up from reviewing it at his desk. “More sensationalist than you usually go for.”

“The People need optimism right now,” she says, walking away to put space between them. She's had trouble standing too close to anyone since getting out.

“Not sure I'd call _offering up a hundred men_ optimism.”

“You'd rather I say loss is unacceptable?” She doesn't look at him, finds that too difficult too. “More are gonna die. They need to feel it means something. That it ain't all hopeless. Print it, Cross. It's time we got serious.”

“No argument there.” He's quiet for a moment. “You all right, Daisy?”

She barks out a laugh. “You know I ain't.”

“I know you ain't.” Still, he doesn't approach her, and she appreciates that more than anything. “What you gonna do about it?”

“Same as before.” She stares out at Shantytown through the cracks of his boarded window, covered to better hide her. “Gonna burn it all down. Set it aflame and let it all come crashing down on top of them. No more games.” She heaves a shuddering breath, wrapping her arms tight around herself. “Soon, Cross. We gonna rise. And they all gonna know what they done to deserve it.”

 

**-1912-**

She is thirty-four years old. She has spent seventeen years—exactly half of her life so far—running, hiding, fighting, and waiting. Tomorrow it comes to a head.

She picks up a blank record. All this talk of fire, it’s got her thinking of something more to say. She slides the record out from its sleeve, sets it in the voxophone, and starts it recording.

"You ever see a forest at the beginning of a fire?" she says quietly. She never has seen a forest fire, but that don’t matter. Don’t always gotta see something to understand it, or to make a good metaphor from it. “For the first flame, you see them possums and squirrels runnin’ through the trees. They know what's coming.” She frowns, mired for a moment in memories, in bitterness, in anger, always anger. She growls, “But the fat bears with their bellies fulla honey, well, you can't hardly wake them up from their comfortable hibernation.”

She draws a slow breath. This feels achingly like it’s gonna be the last record she leaves. At the very least it’s gonna be the last one before the world shakes.

“We're going to Emporia, and then we gonna see what it takes to rouse them from their slumber.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content Warnings in This Chapter:**  
>  -1895 section: systemic racism, mild description of enslavement; oblique references to domestic abuse culminating in an off-page murder; detailed assault of a dude who deserves it  
> -1902 section: brief description of mass death by fire; nongraphic depictions of sky-hook murder  
> -1909 section: systemic racism and misogynynoir, forced hospitalization/imprisonment, mentions of being drugged, oblique references to invasive examination, threat of medical violence (not graphic, nor carried out), nongraphic death by gun, minor references to PTSD
> 
>  **Miscellany:**  
>  I got deep into some supplemental canon materials for this, most notably the articles from The Voice as seen in the now-defunct Flash puzzle game _Industrial Revolution_ (thanks, BioShock Wiki) and the Daisy-centric novel _Mind in Revolt_. The latter details Daisy’s incarceration and subsequent escape in 1909, and is inaccessible to those of us without kindles. Even if I had found a way to get a hold of it, however, I felt more comfortable using my own version of events. The fact that it's written from Dr. Pinchot's point of view really rubs me the wrong way—sure, it's a framing device, but _still_ —to the point where I'm not going to be precious about getting all those details exactly right.


End file.
